The text of Sophist 237-9 is aporetic and shares with many other dialogues this structure: A question is asked and an answer, given in a single sentence, is reached and accepted by the interlocutor. The the interlocutor is examined further and his assent undermined. I argue that the Stranger does not share Theaetetus' perplexity and holds the rejected answer. I explain the Stranger's behavior by appealing to his pedagogy.

The version of the paradox of false judgement examined at Tht. 188c10–189b9 relies on the assumption that to judge falsehoods is to judge the things which are not. The presentation of the argument displays several syntactic ambiguities: at several points it allows the reader to adopt different syntactic connections between the components of sentences. For instance, when Socrates says that in a false judgement the cognizer is “he who judges the things which are not about anything whatsoever” (188d3–4), how should (...) the clause “about anything whatsoever” be construed? In common with “he who judges” and “the things which are not” (in which case the cognizer would be “he who judges about anything whatsoever the things which are not about it”), or exclusively with “he who judges” (in which case the cognizer would be “he who judges about anything whatsoever the things which are not”)? The most plausible answer is that both construals are envisaged. Accordingly, the argument has two branches corresponding to these two alternative construals. In particular, it attempts to show that in both cases the cognizer will address what does not exist – an impossibility. The idea that a false judgement is concerned with what is not about its reference has a clear echo in the Sophist. The way in which the problem is handled in the Theaetetus provides a hint that can help to find a solution for the hotly debated issue of the interpretation of the Sophist’s account of false statement. (shrink)

Within the framework of the discussion about the existence of a spokesman in the Platonic dialogues, we look, in the first part, into the possible transfer of this spokesman’s function from Socrates to the Eleatic Stranger, identifying the contact and divergence points between both characters. In the second part, we try to show that this transfer has a dramatic staging at the beginning of the Sophist dialogue, where Socrates makes a demand that enables the Stranger to demonstrate his genuine philosophical (...) condition. (shrink)